Hierarchichal sharding of flows from sensors to collectors

ABSTRACT

Systems, methods, and computer-readable media for hierarchichal sharding of flows from sensors to collectors. A first collector can receive a first portion of a network flow from a first capturing agent and determine that a second portion of the network flow was not received from the first capturing agent. The first collector can then send the first portion of the network flow to a second collector. A third collector can receive the second portion of the network flow from a second capturing agent and determine that the third collector did not receive the first portion of the network flow. The third collector can then send the second portion of the network flow to the second collector. The second collector can then aggregate the first portion and second portion of the network flow to yield the entire portion of the network flow.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/171,899, entitled “SYSTEM FOR MONITORING AND MANAGING DATACENTERS,” filed on Jun. 5, 2015, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure pertains to network analytics, and more specifically to capturing network flows in the network, and sharding or grouping the network flows for scalability of the captured network flows.

BACKGROUND

In a network environment, capturing agents or sensors can be placed at various devices or elements in the network to collect flow data and network statistics from different locations. The collected data from the capturing agents can be analyzed to monitor and troubleshoot the network. The data collected from the capturing agents can provide valuable details about the status, security, or performance of the network, as well as any network elements. Information about the capturing agents can also help interpret the data from the capturing agents, in order to infer or ascertain additional details from the collected data. For example, understanding the placement (e.g., deployment location) of a capturing agent within a device or virtualized environment can provide a context to the data reported by the capturing agents, which can further help identify specific patterns or conditions in the network.

With larger networks, however, the number of capturing agents and sessions can grow to millions or more. It thus becomes very difficult to scale the numerous capturing agents and sensors. Moreover, as the number of collectors used in the network to collect the captured data from the capturing agents grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to track, organize, and maintain different portions of the same network flow.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In order to describe the manner in which the above-recited and other advantages and features of the disclosure can be obtained, a more particular description of the principles briefly described above will be rendered by reference to specific embodiments thereof which are illustrated in the appended drawings. Understanding that these drawings depict only exemplary embodiments of the disclosure and are not therefore to be considered to be limiting of its scope, the principles herein are described and explained with additional specificity and detail through the use of the accompanying drawings in which:

FIG. 1 illustrates a diagram of an example network environment;

FIG. 2A illustrates a schematic diagram of an example capturing agent deployment in a virtualized environment;

FIG. 2B illustrates a schematic diagram of an example capturing agent deployment in an example network device;

FIG. 2C illustrates a schematic diagram of an example reporting system in an example capturing agent topology;

FIG. 3 illustrates a schematic diagram of an example configuration for collecting capturing agent reports;

FIG. 4A illustrates a schematic diagram of a multi-layer sharding scheme;

FIG. 4B illustrates a schematic diagram of a system for hierarchical sharding collectors, sensors, and flows in accordance with various example embodiments;

FIG. 5 illustrates an example listing of example fields on a capturing agent report;

FIG. 6 illustrates an example method;

FIG. 7 illustrates an example network device; and

FIGS. 8A and 8B illustrate example systems.

DESCRIPTION OF EXAMPLE EMBODIMENTS

Various examples of the disclosure are discussed in detail below. While specific implementations are discussed, it should be understood that this is done for illustration purposes only. A person skilled in the relevant art will recognize that other components and configurations may be used without parting from the spirit and scope of the disclosure. Any step or component of one example or embodiment disclosed herein can be used or combined with any other example or embodiment.

Overview

Additional features and advantages of the disclosure will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or can be learned by practice of the herein disclosed principles. The features and advantages of the disclosure can be realized and obtained by means of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims. These and other features of the disclosure will become more fully apparent from the following description and appended claims, or can be learned by the practice of the principles set forth herein.

The approaches set forth herein can be used to improve the management, collection, and aggregation of analytics data in a network. The approaches herein can ensure that different portions of a network flow are aggregated and/or maintained together even when reported by capturing agents to different collectors in the network. The approaches herein can use a first layer of shards, which can include groups of collectors, to scale the collectors and sensed data. The approaches herein can also use a second layer of shards, which can also include groups of collectors, to maintain, in a centralized location (e.g., a collector in the second layer of shards), all of the different portions of a network flow reported to collectors in the first layer of shards. This multi-layered or hierarchical sharding approach can help more effectively and efficiently manage the collection and aggregation of analytics data in a network, while also centralizing fragmented portions of reported data to enable defragmentation of all reported portions of the data.

Disclosed are systems, methods, and computer-readable storage media for hierarchichal sharding of network flows reported from capturing agents deployed around a network. In an example method, collectors in a network can be grouped into a first layer of shards, and each shard can include a set of collectors. A second layer of shards can also be created by mapping groups of collectors to respective shards in the second layer of shards.

Moreover, a first collector in a first shard from the first layer of shards can receive, from a first capturing agent, a first portion of a network flow. The first portion of the network flow can be captured by the first capturing agent at the first capturing agent's host, such as a hypervisor, virtual machine (VM), server, switch, etc.

The first collector can then determine that a second portion of the network flow was not received by the first collector. For example, the first collector can determine that it did not receive the entire network flow (e.g., at least a portion of the network flow is missing). The first collector can then send the first portion of the network flow to a second collector from a second shard in a second layer of shards.

A third collector from a third shard in the first layer of shards can receive, from a second capturing agent, the second portion of the network flow. The second portion can be captured by the second capturing agent at a host of the second capturing agent, such as a hypervisor, a VM, a container, a server, etc. The third collector can determine that the first portion of the network flow was not received by the third collector. In other words, the third collector can determine that it received less than the entire network flow.

The third collector can then send, to the second collector, the second portion of the network flow. The third collector can send the second portion based on the determination that it did not receive the first portion of the network flow.

The second collector can receive the first portion from the first collector and the second portion from the third collector. The second collector can then determine that the first portion and the second portion are part of the same network flow. Accordingly, the second collector can then aggregate the first portion and the second portion to yield an aggregated network flow. The aggregated network flow can include the entire portion of the network flow. However, in some cases, if other portions of the network flow were sent by other capturing agents to other collectors, those receiving collectors can similarly send their received portions to the second collector so that the second collector can aggregate all portions of the network flow.

Description

The disclosed technology addresses the need in the art for scaling the capturing and collection of network data. Disclosed are systems, methods, and computer-readable storage media for hierarchichal sharding of network flows in a network. A description of an example network environment, as illustrated in FIG. 1, is first disclosed herein. A discussion of capturing agents and collection environments and configurations will then follow. The discussion continues with a discussion of hierarchichal sharding of network flows, sensors, and collectors. The discussion then concludes with a description of example systems and devices. These variations shall be described herein as the various embodiments are set forth. The disclosure now turns to FIG. 1.

FIG. 1 illustrates a diagram of example network environment 100. Fabric 112 can represent the underlay (i.e., physical network) of network environment 100. Fabric 112 can include spine routers 1-N (102 _(A-N)) (collectively “102”) and leaf routers 1-N (104 _(A-N)) (collectively “104”). Leaf routers 104 can reside at the edge of fabric 112, and can thus represent the physical network edges. Leaf routers 104 can be, for example, top-of-rack (“ToR”) switches, aggregation switches, gateways, ingress and/or egress switches, provider edge devices, and/or any other type of routing or switching device.

Leaf routers 104 can be responsible for routing and/or bridging tenant or endpoint packets and applying network policies. Spine routers 102 can perform switching and routing within fabric 112. Thus, network connectivity in fabric 112 can flow from spine routers 102 to leaf routers 104, and vice versa.

Leaf routers 104 can provide servers 1-4 (106 _(A-D)) (collectively “106”), hypervisors 1-4 (108 _(A)-108 _(D)) (collectively “108”), virtual machines (VMs) 1-4 (110 _(A)-110 _(D)) (collectively “110”), collectors 118, engines 120, and the Layer 2 (L2) network access to fabric 112. For example, leaf routers 104 can encapsulate and decapsulate packets to and from servers 106 in order to enable communications throughout environment 100. Leaf routers 104 can also connect other network-capable device(s) or network(s), such as a firewall, a database, a server, etc., to the fabric 112. Leaf routers 104 can also provide any other servers, resources, endpoints, external networks, VMs, services, tenants, or workloads with access to fabric 112.

VMs 110 can be virtual machines hosted by hypervisors 108 running on servers 106. VMs 110 can include workloads running on a guest operating system on a respective server. Hypervisors 108 can provide a layer of software, firmware, and/or hardware that creates and runs the VMs 110. Hypervisors 108 can allow VMs 110 to share hardware resources on servers 106, and the hardware resources on servers 106 to appear as multiple, separate hardware platforms. Moreover, hypervisors 108 and servers 106 can host one or more VMs 110. For example, server 106 _(A) and hypervisor 108 _(A) can host VMs 110 _(A-B).

In some cases, VMs 110 and/or hypervisors 108 can be migrated to other servers 106. For example, VM 110 _(A) can be migrated to server 106 _(C) and hypervisor 108 _(B). Servers 106 can similarly be migrated to other locations in network environment 100. For example, a server connected to a specific leaf router can be changed to connect to a different or additional leaf router. In some cases, some or all of servers 106, hypervisors 108, and/or VMs 110 can represent tenant space. Tenant space can include workloads, services, applications, devices, and/or resources that are associated with one or more clients or subscribers. Accordingly, traffic in network environment 100 can be routed based on specific tenant policies, spaces, agreements, configurations, etc. Moreover, addressing can vary between one or more tenants. In some configurations, tenant spaces can be divided into logical segments and/or networks and separated from logical segments and/or networks associated with other tenants.

Any of leaf routers 104, servers 106, hypervisors 108, and VMs 110 can include capturing agent 116 (also referred to as a “sensor”) configured to capture network data, and report any portion of the captured data to collector 118. Capturing agents 116 can be processes, agents, modules, drivers, or components deployed on a respective system or system layer (e.g., a server, VM, virtual container, hypervisor, leaf router, etc.), configured to capture network data for the respective system (e.g., data received or transmitted by the respective system), and report some or all of the captured data and statistics to collector 118.

For example, a VM capturing agent can run as a process, kernel module, software element, or kernel driver on the guest operating system installed in a VM and configured to capture and report data (e.g., network and/or system data) processed (e.g., sent, received, generated, etc.) by the VM.

A hypervisor capturing agent can run as a process, kernel module, software element, or kernel driver on the host operating system installed at the hypervisor layer and configured to capture and report data (e.g., network and/or system data) processed (e.g., sent, received, generated, etc.) by the hypervisor.

A container capturing agent can run as a process, kernel module, software element, or kernel driver on the operating system of a device, such as a switch or server, which can be configured to capture and report data processed by the container.

A server capturing agent can run as a process, kernel module, software element, or kernel driver on the host operating system of a server and configured to capture and report data (e.g., network and/or system data) processed (e.g., sent, received, generated, etc.) by the server.

A network device capturing agent can run as a process, software element, or component in a network device, such as leaf routers 104, and configured to capture and report data (e.g., network and/or system data) processed (e.g., sent, received, generated, etc.) by the network device.

Capturing agents 116 can be configured to report observed data, statistics, and/or metadata about one or more packets, flows, communications, processes, events, and/or activities to collector 118. For example, capturing agents 116 can capture network data and statistics processed (e.g., sent, received, generated, dropped, forwarded, etc.) by the system or host (e.g., server, hypervisor, VM, container, switch, etc.) of the capturing agents 116 (e.g., where the capturing agents 116 are deployed). The capturing agents 116 can also report the network data and statistics to one or more devices, such as collectors 118 and/or engines 120. For example, the capturing agents 116 can report an amount of traffic processed by their host, a frequency of the traffic processed by their host, a type of traffic processed (e.g., sent, received, generated, etc.) by their host, a source or destination of the traffic processed by their host, a pattern in the traffic, an amount of traffic dropped or blocked by their host, types of requests or data in the traffic received, discrepancies in traffic (e.g., spoofed addresses, invalid addresses, hidden sender, etc.), protocols used in communications, type or characteristics of responses to traffic by the hosts of the capturing agents 116, what processes have triggered specific packets, etc.

Capturing agents 116 can also capture and report information about the system or host of the capturing agents 116 (e.g., type of host, type of environment, status of host, conditions of the host, etc.). Such information can include, for example, data or metadata of active or previously active processes of the system, operating system user identifiers, kernel modules loaded or used, network software characteristics (e.g., software switch, virtual network card, etc.), metadata of files on the system, system alerts, number and/or identity of applications at the host, domain information, networking information (e.g., address, topology, settings, connectivity, etc.), session information (e.g., session identifier), faults or errors, memory or CPU usage, threads, filename and/or path, services, security information or settings, and so forth.

Capturing agents 116 may also analyze the processes running on the respective VMs, hypervisors, servers, or network devices to determine specifically which process is responsible for a particular flow of network traffic. Similarly, capturing agents 116 may determine which operating system user (e.g., root, system, John Doe, Admin, etc.) is responsible for a given flow. Reported data from capturing agents 116 can provide details or statistics particular to one or more tenants or customers. For example, reported data from a subset of capturing agents 116 deployed throughout devices or elements in a tenant space can provide information about the performance, use, quality, events, processes, security status, characteristics, statistics, patterns, conditions, configurations, topology, and/or any other information for the particular tenant space.

Collectors 118 can be one or more devices, modules, workloads, VMs, containers, and/or processes capable of receiving data from capturing agents 116. Collectors 118 can thus collect reports and data from capturing agents 116. Collectors 118 can be deployed anywhere in network environment 100 and/or even on remote networks capable of communicating with network environment 100. For example, one or more collectors can be deployed within fabric 112, on the L2 network, or on one or more of the servers 106, VMs 110, hypervisors. Collectors 118 can be hosted on a server or a cluster of servers, for example. In some cases, collectors 118 can be implemented in one or more servers in a distributed fashion.

As previously noted, collectors 118 can include one or more collectors. Moreover, a collector can be configured to receive reported data from all capturing agents 116 or a subset of capturing agents 116. For example, a collector can be assigned to a subset of capturing agents 116 so the data received by that specific collector is limited to data from the subset of capturing agents 116. Collectors 118 can be configured to aggregate data from all capturing agents 116 and/or a subset of capturing agents 116. Further, collectors 118 can be configured to analyze some or all of the data reported by capturing agents 116.

Environment 100 can include one or more analytics engines 120 configured to analyze the data reported to collectors 118. For example, engines 120 can be configured to receive collected data from collectors 118, aggregate the data, analyze the data (individually and/or aggregated), generate reports, identify conditions, compute statistics, visualize reported data, troubleshoot conditions, visualize the network and/or portions of the network (e.g., a tenant space), generate alerts, identify patterns, calculate misconfigurations, identify errors, generate suggestions, generate testing, detect compromised elements (e.g., capturing agents 116, devices, servers, switches, etc.), and/or perform any other analytics functions.

Engines 120 can include one or more modules or software programs for performing such analytics. Further, engines 120 can reside on one or more servers, devices, VMs, nodes, etc. For example, engines 120 can be separate VMs or servers, an individual VM or server, or a cluster of servers or applications. Engines 120 can reside within the fabric 112, within the L2 network, outside of the environment 100 (e.g., WAN 114), in one or more segments or networks coupled with the fabric 112 (e.g., overlay network coupled with the fabric 112), etc. Engines 120 can be coupled with the fabric 112 via the leaf switches 104, for example.

While collectors 118 and engines 120 are shown as separate entities, this is simply a non-limiting example for illustration purposes, as other configurations are also contemplated herein. For example, any of collectors 118 and engines 120 can be part of a same or separate entity. Moreover, any of the collector, aggregation, and analytics functions can be implemented by one entity (e.g., a collector 118 or engine 120) or separately implemented by multiple entities (e.g., engines 120 and/or collectors 118).

Each of the capturing agents 116 can use a respective address (e.g., internet protocol (IP) address, port number, etc.) of their host to send information to collectors 118 and/or any other destination. Collectors 118 may also be associated with their respective addresses such as IP addresses. Moreover, capturing agents 116 can periodically send information about flows they observe to collectors 118. Capturing agents 116 can be configured to report each and every flow they observe or a subset of flows they observe. For example, capturing agents 116 can report every flow always, every flow within a period of time, every flow at one or more intervals, or a subset of flows during a period of time or at one or more intervals.

Capturing agents 116 can report a list of flows that were active during a period of time (e.g., between the current time and the time of the last report). The consecutive periods of time of observance can be represented as pre-defined or adjustable time series. The series can be adjusted to a specific level of granularity. Thus, the time periods can be adjusted to control the level of details in statistics and can be customized based on specific requirements or conditions, such as security, scalability, bandwidth, storage, etc. The time series information can also be implemented to focus on more important flows or components (e.g., VMs) by varying the time intervals. The communication channel between a capturing agent and collector 118 can also create a flow in every reporting interval. Thus, the information transmitted or reported by capturing agents 116 can also include information about the flow created by the communication channel.

When referring to a capturing agent's host herein, the host can refer to the physical device or component hosting the capturing agent (e.g., server, networking device, ASIC, etc.), the virtualized environment hosting the capturing agent (e.g., hypervisor, virtual machine, etc.), the operating system hosting the capturing agent (e.g., guest operating system, host operating system, etc.), and/or system layer hosting the capturing agent (e.g., hardware layer, operating system layer, hypervisor layer, virtual machine layer, etc.).

FIG. 2A illustrates a schematic diagram of an example capturing agent deployment 200 in a server 106 _(A). Server 106 _(A) can execute and host one or more VMs 110 _(A-N) (collectively “110”). VMs 110 can be configured to run workloads (e.g., applications, services, processes, functions, etc.) based on hardware resources 210 on server 106 _(A). VMs 110 can run on guest operating systems 204 _(A-N) (collectively “204”) on a virtual operating platform provided by hypervisor 108 _(A). Each VM 110 can run a respective guest operating system 204 which can be the same or different as other guest operating systems 204 associated with other VMs 110 on server 106 _(A). Each of guest operating systems 204 can execute one or more processes, which may in turn be programs, applications, modules, drivers, services, widgets, etc. Moreover, each VM 110 can have one or more network addresses, such as an internet protocol (IP) address. VMs 110 can thus communicate with hypervisor 108 _(A), server 106 _(A), and/or any remote devices or networks using the one or more network addresses.

Hypervisor 108 _(A) (otherwise known as a virtual machine manager or monitor) can be a layer of software, firmware, and/or hardware that creates and runs VMs 110. Guest operating systems 204 running on VMs 110 can share virtualized hardware resources created by hypervisor 108 _(A). The virtualized hardware resources can provide the illusion of separate hardware components. Moreover, the virtualized hardware resources can perform as physical hardware components (e.g., memory, storage, processor, network interface, peripherals, etc.), and can be driven by hardware resources 210 on server 106 _(A). Hypervisor 108 _(A) can have one or more network addresses, such as an internet protocol (IP) address, to communicate with other devices, components, or networks. For example, hypervisor 108 _(A) can have a dedicated IP address which it can use to communicate with VMs 110, server 106 _(A), and/or any remote devices or networks.

Hypervisor 108 _(A) can be assigned a network address, such as an IP, with a global scope. For example, hypervisor 108 _(A) can have an IP that can be reached or seen by VMs 110 _(A-N) as well any other devices in the network environment 100 illustrated in FIG. 1. On the other hand, VMs 110 can have a network address, such as an IP, with a local scope. For example, VM 110 _(A) can have an IP that is within a local network segment where VM 110 _(A) resides and/or which may not be directly reached or seen from other network segments in the network environment 100.

Hardware resources 210 of server 106 _(A) can provide the underlying physical hardware that drive operations and functionalities provided by server 106 _(A), hypervisor 108 _(A), and VMs 110. Hardware resources 210 can include, for example, one or more memory resources, one or more storage resources, one or more communication interfaces, one or more processors, one or more circuit boards, one or more buses, one or more extension cards, one or more power supplies, one or more antennas, one or more peripheral components, etc. Additional examples of hardware resources are described below with reference to FIGS. 10 and 11A-B.

Server 106 _(A) can also include one or more host operating systems (not shown). The number of host operating systems can vary by configuration. For example, some configurations can include a dual boot configuration that allows server 106 _(A) to boot into one of multiple host operating systems. In other configurations, server 106 _(A) may run a single host operating system. Host operating systems can run on hardware resources 210. In some cases, hypervisor 108 _(A) can run on, or utilize, a host operating system on server 106 _(A). Each of the host operating systems can execute one or more processes, which may be programs, applications, modules, drivers, services, widgets, etc.

Server 106 _(A) can also have one or more network addresses, such as an IP address, to communicate with other devices, components, or networks. For example, server 106 _(A) can have an IP address assigned to a communications interface from hardware resources 210, which it can use to communicate with VMs 110, hypervisor 108 _(A), leaf router 104 _(A) in FIG. 1, collectors 118 in FIG. 1, and/or any remote devices or networks.

VM capturing agents 202 _(A-N) (collectively “202”) can be deployed on one or more of VMs 110. VM capturing agents 202 can be data and packet inspection agents or sensors deployed on VMs 110 to capture packets, flows, processes, events, traffic, and/or any data flowing into, out of, or through VMs 110. VM capturing agents 202 can be configured to export or report any data collected or captured by the capturing agents 202 to a remote entity, such as collectors 118, for example. VM capturing agents 202 can communicate or report such data using a network address of the respective VMs 110 (e.g., VM IP address).

VM capturing agents 202 can capture and report any traffic (e.g., packets, flows, etc.) sent, received, generated, and/or processed by VMs 110. For example, capturing agents 202 can report every packet or flow of communication sent and received by VMs 110. Such communication channel between capturing agents 202 and collectors 108 creates a flow in every monitoring period or interval and the flow generated by capturing agents 202 may be denoted as a control flow. Moreover, any communication sent or received by VMs 110, including data reported from capturing agents 202, can create a network flow. VM capturing agents 202 can report such flows in the form of a control flow to a remote device, such as collectors 118 illustrated in FIG. 1.

VM capturing agents 202 can report each flow separately or aggregated with other flows. When reporting a flow via a control flow, VM capturing agents 202 can include a capturing agent identifier that identifies capturing agents 202 as reporting the associated flow. VM capturing agents 202 can also include in the control flow a flow identifier, an IP address, a timestamp, metadata, a process ID, an OS username associated with the process ID, a host or environment descriptor (e.g., type of software bridge or virtual network card, type of host such as a hypervisor or VM, etc.), and any other information, as further described below. In addition, capturing agents 202 can append the process and user information (i.e., which process and/or user is associated with a particular flow) to the control flow. The additional information as identified above can be applied to the control flow as labels. Alternatively, the additional information can be included as part of a header, a trailer, or a payload.

VM capturing agents 202 can also report multiple flows as a set of flows. When reporting a set of flows, VM capturing agents 202 can include a flow identifier for the set of flows and/or a flow identifier for each flow in the set of flows. VM capturing agents 202 can also include one or more timestamps and other information as previously explained.

VM capturing agents 202 can run as a process, kernel module, or kernel driver on guest operating systems 204 of VMs 110. VM capturing agents 202 can thus monitor any traffic sent, received, or processed by VMs 110, any processes running on guest operating systems 204, any users and user activities on guest operating system 204, any workloads on VMs 110, etc.

Hypervisor capturing agent 206 can be deployed on hypervisor 108 _(A). Hypervisor capturing agent 206 can be a data inspection agent or sensor deployed on hypervisor 108 _(A) to capture traffic (e.g., packets, flows, etc.) and/or data flowing through hypervisor 108 _(A). Hypervisor capturing agent 206 can be configured to export or report any data collected or captured by hypervisor capturing agent 206 to a remote entity, such as collectors 118, for example. Hypervisor capturing agent 206 can communicate or report such data using a network address of hypervisor 108 _(A), such as an IP address of hypervisor 108 _(A).

Because hypervisor 108 _(A) can see traffic and data originating from VMs 110, hypervisor capturing agent 206 can also capture and report any data (e.g., traffic data) associated with VMs 110. For example, hypervisor capturing agent 206 can report every packet or flow of communication sent or received by VMs 110 and/or VM capturing agents 202. Moreover, any communication sent or received by hypervisor 108 _(A), including data reported from hypervisor capturing agent 206, can create a network flow. Hypervisor capturing agent 206 can report such flows in the form of a control flow to a remote device, such as collectors 118 illustrated in FIG. 1. Hypervisor capturing agent 206 can report each flow separately and/or in combination with other flows or data.

When reporting a flow, hypervisor capturing agent 206 can include a capturing agent identifier that identifies hypervisor capturing agent 206 as reporting the flow. Hypervisor capturing agent 206 can also include in the control flow a flow identifier, an IP address, a timestamp, metadata, a process ID, and any other information, as explained below. In addition, capturing agents 206 can append the process and user information (i.e., which process and/or user is associated with a particular flow) to the control flow. The additional information as identified above can be applied to the control flow as labels. Alternatively, the additional information can be included as part of a header, a trailer, or a payload.

Hypervisor capturing agent 206 can also report multiple flows as a set of flows. When reporting a set of flows, hypervisor capturing agent 206 can include a flow identifier for the set of flows and/or a flow identifier for each flow in the set of flows. Hypervisor capturing agent 206 can also include one or more timestamps and other information as previously explained, such as process and user information.

As previously explained, any communication captured or reported by VM capturing agents 202 can flow through hypervisor 108 _(A). Thus, hypervisor capturing agent 206 can observe and capture any flows or packets reported by VM capturing agents 202, including any control flows. Accordingly, hypervisor capturing agent 206 can also report any packets or flows reported by VM capturing agents 202 and any control flows generated by VM capturing agents 202. For example, VM capturing agent 202 _(A) on VM 1 (110 _(A)) captures flow 1 (“F1”) and reports F1 to collector 118 on FIG. 1. Hypervisor capturing agent 206 on hypervisor 108 _(A) can also see and capture F1, as F1 would traverse hypervisor 108 _(A) when being sent or received by VM 1 (110 _(A)). Accordingly, hypervisor capturing agent 206 on hypervisor 108 _(A) can also report F1 to collector 118. Thus, collector 118 can receive a report of F1 from VM capturing agent 202 _(A) on VM 1 (110 _(A)) and another report of F1 from hypervisor capturing agent 206 on hypervisor 108 _(A).

When reporting F1, hypervisor capturing agent 206 can report F1 as a message or report that is separate from the message or report of F1 transmitted by VM capturing agent 202 _(A) on VM 1 (110 _(A)). However, hypervisor capturing agent 206 can also, or otherwise, report F1 as a message or report that includes or appends the message or report of F1 transmitted by VM capturing agent 202 _(A) on VM 1 (110 _(A)). In other words, hypervisor capturing agent 206 can report F1 as a separate message or report from VM capturing agent 202 _(A)'s message or report of F1, and/or a same message or report that includes both a report of F1 by hypervisor capturing agent 206 and the report of F1 by VM capturing agent 202 _(A) at VM 1 (110 _(A)). In this way, VM capturing agents 202 at VMs 110 can report packets or flows received or sent by VMs 110, and hypervisor capturing agent 206 at hypervisor 108 _(A) can report packets or flows received or sent by hypervisor 108 _(A), including any flows or packets received or sent by VMs 110 and/or reported by VM capturing agents 202.

Hypervisor capturing agent 206 can run as a process, kernel module, or kernel driver on the host operating system associated with hypervisor 108 _(A). Hypervisor capturing agent 206 can thus monitor any traffic sent and received by hypervisor 108 _(A), any processes associated with hypervisor 108 _(A), etc.

Server 106 _(A) can also have server capturing agent 208 running on it. Server capturing agent 208 can be a data inspection agent or sensor deployed on server 106 _(A) to capture data (e.g., packets, flows, traffic data, etc.) on server 106 _(A). Server capturing agent 208 can be configured to export or report any data collected or captured by server capturing agent 206 to a remote entity, such as collector 118, for example. Server capturing agent 208 can communicate or report such data using a network address of server 106 _(A), such as an IP address of server 106 _(A).

Server capturing agent 208 can capture and report any packet or flow of communication associated with server 106 _(A). For example, capturing agent 208 can report every packet or flow of communication sent or received by one or more communication interfaces of server 106 _(A). Moreover, any communication sent or received by server 106 _(A), including data reported from capturing agents 202 and 206, can create a network flow associated with server 106 _(A). Server capturing agent 208 can report such flows in the form of a control flow to a remote device, such as collector 118 illustrated in FIG. 1. Server capturing agent 208 can report each flow separately or in combination. When reporting a flow, server capturing agent 208 can include a capturing agent identifier that identifies server capturing agent 208 as reporting the associated flow. Server capturing agent 208 can also include in the control flow a flow identifier, an IP address, a timestamp, metadata, a process ID, and any other information. In addition, capturing agent 208 can append the process and user information (i.e., which process and/or user is associated with a particular flow) to the control flow. The additional information as identified above can be applied to the control flow as labels. Alternatively, the additional information can be included as part of a header, a trailer, or a payload.

Server capturing agent 208 can also report multiple flows as a set of flows. When reporting a set of flows, server capturing agent 208 can include a flow identifier for the set of flows and/or a flow identifier for each flow in the set of flows. Server capturing agent 208 can also include one or more timestamps and other information as previously explained.

Any communications captured or reported by capturing agents 202 and 206 can flow through server 106 _(A). Thus, server capturing agent 208 can observe or capture any flows or packets reported by capturing agents 202 and 206. In other words, network data observed by capturing agents 202 and 206 inside VMs 110 and hypervisor 108 _(A) can be a subset of the data observed by server capturing agent 208 on server 106 _(A). Accordingly, server capturing agent 208 can report any packets or flows reported by capturing agents 202 and 206 and any control flows generated by capturing agents 202 and 206. For example, capturing agent 202 _(A) on VM 1 (110 _(A)) captures flow 1 (F1) and reports F1 to collector 118 as illustrated on FIG. 1. Capturing agent 206 on hypervisor 108 _(A) can also observe and capture F1, as F1 would traverse hypervisor 108 _(A) when being sent or received by VM 1 (110 _(A)). In addition, capturing agent 206 on server 106 _(A) can also see and capture F1, as F1 would traverse server 106 _(A) when being sent or received by VM 1 (110 _(A)) and hypervisor 108 _(A). Accordingly, capturing agent 208 can also report F1 to collector 118. Thus, collector 118 can receive a report (i.e., control flow) regarding F1 from capturing agent 202 _(A) on VM 1 (110 _(A)), capturing agent 206 on hypervisor 108 _(A), and capturing agent 208 on server 106 _(A).

When reporting F1, server capturing agent 208 can report F1 as a message or report that is separate from any messages or reports of F1 transmitted by capturing agent 202 _(A) on VM 1 (110 _(A)) or capturing agent 206 on hypervisor 108 _(A). However, server capturing agent 208 can also, or otherwise, report F1 as a message or report that includes or appends the messages or reports or metadata of F1 transmitted by capturing agent 202 _(A) on VM 1 (110 _(A)) and capturing agent 206 on hypervisor 108 _(A). In other words, server capturing agent 208 can report F1 as a separate message or report from the messages or reports of F1 from capturing agent 202 _(A) and capturing agent 206, and/or a same message or report that includes a report of F1 by capturing agent 202 _(A), capturing agent 206, and capturing agent 208. In this way, capturing agents 202 at VMs 110 can report packets or flows received or sent by VMs 110, capturing agent 206 at hypervisor 108 _(A) can report packets or flows received or sent by hypervisor 108 _(A), including any flows or packets received or sent by VMs 110 and reported by capturing agents 202, and capturing agent 208 at server 106 _(A) can report packets or flows received or sent by server 106 _(A), including any flows or packets received or sent by VMs 110 and reported by capturing agents 202, and any flows or packets received or sent by hypervisor 108 _(A) and reported by capturing agent 206.

Server capturing agent 208 can run as a process, kernel module, or kernel driver on the host operating system or a hardware component of server 106 _(A). Server capturing agent 208 can thus monitor any traffic sent and received by server 106 _(A), any processes associated with server 106 _(A), etc.

In addition to network data, capturing agents 202, 206, and 208 can capture additional information about the system or environment in which they reside. For example, capturing agents 202, 206, and 208 can capture data or metadata of active or previously active processes of their respective system or environment, operating system user identifiers, metadata of files on their respective system or environment, timestamps, network addressing information, flow identifiers, capturing agent identifiers, etc. Capturing agents 202, 206, and 208

Moreover, capturing agents 202, 206, 208 are not specific to any operating system environment, hypervisor environment, network environment, or hardware environment. Thus, capturing agents 202, 206, and 208 can operate in any environment.

As previously explained, capturing agents 202, 206, and 208 can send information about the network traffic they observe. This information can be sent to one or more remote devices, such as one or more servers, collectors, engines, etc. Each capturing agent can be configured to send respective information using a network address, such as an IP address, and any other communication details, such as port number, to one or more destination addresses or locations. Capturing agents 202, 206, and 208 can send metadata about one or more flows, packets, communications, processes, events, etc.

Capturing agents 202, 206, and 208 can periodically report information about each flow or packet they observe. The information reported can contain a list of flows or packets that were active during a period of time (e.g., between the current time and the time at which the last information was reported). The communication channel between the capturing agent and the destination can create a flow in every interval. For example, the communication channel between capturing agent 208 and collector 118 can create a control flow. Thus, the information reported by a capturing agent can also contain information about this control flow. For example, the information reported by capturing agent 208 to collector 118 can include a list of flows or packets that were active at hypervisor 108 _(A) during a period of time, as well as information about the communication channel between capturing agent 206 and collector 118 used to report the information by capturing agent 206.

FIG. 2B illustrates a schematic diagram of example capturing agent deployment 220 in an example network device. The network device is described as leaf router 104 _(A), as illustrated in FIG. 1. However, this is for explanation purposes. The network device can be any other network device, such as any other switch, router, etc.

In this example, leaf router 104 _(A) can include network resources 222, such as memory, storage, communication, processing, input, output, and other types of resources. Leaf router 104 _(A) can also include operating system environment 224. The operating system environment 224 can include any operating system, such as a network operating system, embedded operating system, etc. Operating system environment 224 can include processes, functions, and applications for performing networking, routing, switching, forwarding, policy implementation, messaging, monitoring, and other types of operations.

Leaf router 104 _(A) can also include capturing agent 226. Capturing agent 226 can be an agent or sensor configured to capture network data, such as flows or packets, sent received, or processed by leaf router 104 _(A). Capturing agent 226 can also be configured to capture other information, such as processes, statistics, users, alerts, status information, device information, etc. Moreover, capturing agent 226 can be configured to report captured data to a remote device or network, such as collector 118 shown in FIG. 1, for example. Capturing agent 226 can report information using one or more network addresses associated with leaf router 104 _(A) or collector 118. For example, capturing agent 226 can be configured to report information using an IP assigned to an active communications interface on leaf router 104 _(A).

Leaf router 104 _(A) can be configured to route traffic to and from other devices or networks, such as server 106 _(A). Accordingly, capturing agent 226 can also report data reported by other capturing agents on other devices. For example, leaf router 104 _(A) can be configured to route traffic sent and received by server 106 _(A) to other devices. Thus, data reported from capturing agents deployed on server 106 _(A), such as VM and hypervisor capturing agents on server 106 _(A), would also be observed by capturing agent 226 and can thus be reported by capturing agent 226 as data observed at leaf router 104 _(A). Such report can be a control flow generated by capturing agent 226. Data reported by the VM and hypervisor capturing agents on server 106 _(A) can therefore be a subset of the data reported by capturing agent 226.

Capturing agent 226 can run as a process or component (e.g., firmware, module, hardware device, etc.) in leaf router 104 _(A). Moreover, capturing agent 226 can be installed on leaf router 104 _(A) as a software or firmware agent. In some configurations, leaf router 104 _(A) itself can act as capturing agent 226. Moreover, capturing agent 226 can run within operating system 224 and/or separate from operating system 224.

FIG. 2C illustrates a schematic diagram of example reporting system 240 in an example capturing agent topology. The capturing agent topology includes capturing agents along a path from a virtualized environment (e.g., VM and hypervisor) to the fabric 112.

Leaf router 104 _(A) can route packets or traffic 242 between fabric 112 and server 106 _(A), hypervisor 108 _(A), and VM 110 _(A). Packets or traffic 242 between VM 110 _(A) and leaf router 104 _(A) can flow through hypervisor 108 _(A) and server 106 _(A). Packets or traffic 242 between hypervisor 108 _(A) and leaf router 104 _(A) can flow through server 106 _(A). Finally, packets or traffic 242 between server 106 _(A) and leaf router 104 _(A) can flow directly to leaf router 104 _(A). However, in some cases, packets or traffic 242 between server 106 _(A) and leaf router 104 _(A) can flow through one or more intervening devices or networks, such as a switch or a firewall.

Moreover, VM capturing agent 202 _(A) at VM 110 _(A), hypervisor capturing agent 206 at hypervisor 108 _(A), network device capturing agent 226 at leaf router 104 _(A), and any server capturing agent at server 106 _(A) (e.g., capturing agent running on host environment of server 106 _(A)) can send reports 244 (also referred to as control flows) to collector 118 based on the packets or traffic 242 captured at each respective capturing agent. Reports 244 from VM capturing agent 202 _(A) to collectors 118 can flow through VM 110 _(A), hypervisor 108 _(A), server 106 _(A), and leaf router 104 _(A). Reports 244 from hypervisor capturing agent 206 to collectors 118 can flow through hypervisor 108 _(A), server 106 _(A), and leaf router 104 _(A). Reports 244 from any other server capturing agent at server 106 _(A) to collectors 118 can flow through server 106 _(A) and leaf router 104 _(A). Finally, reports 244 from network device capturing agent 226 to collectors 118 can flow through leaf router 104 _(A). Although reports 244 are depicted as being routed separately from traffic 242 in FIG. 2C, one of ordinary skill in the art will understand that reports 244 and traffic 242 can be transmitted through the same communication channel(s).

Reports 244 can include any portion of packets or traffic 242 captured at the respective capturing agents. Reports 244 can also include other information, such as timestamps, process information, capturing agent identifiers, flow identifiers, flow statistics, notifications, logs, user information, system information, etc. Some or all of this information can be appended to reports 244 as one or more labels, metadata, or as part of the packet(s)' header, trailer, or payload. For example, if a user opens a browser on VM 110 _(A) and navigates to examplewebsite.com, VM capturing agent 202 _(A) of VM 110 _(A) can determine which user (i.e., operating system user) of VM 110 _(A) (e.g., username “johndoe85”) and which process being executed on the operating system of VM 110 _(A) (e.g., “chrome.exe”) were responsible for the particular network flow to and from examplewebsite.com. Once such information is determined, the information can be included in report 244 as labels for example, and report 244 can be transmitted from VM capturing agent 202 _(A) to collectors 118. Such additional information can help system 240 to gain insight into flow information at the process and user level, for instance. This information can be used for security, optimization, and determining structures and dependencies within system 240.

In some examples, the reports 244 can include various statistics and/or usage information reported by the respective capturing agents. For example, the reports 244 can indicate an amount of traffic captured by the respective capturing agent, which can include the amount of traffic sent, received, and generated by the capturing agent's host; a type of traffic captured, such as video, audio, Web (e.g., HTTP or HTTPS), database queries, application traffic, etc.; a source and/or destination of the traffic, such as a destination server or application, a source network or device, a source or destination address or name (e.g., IP address, DNS name, FQDN, packet label, MAC address, VLAN, VNID, VxLAN, source or destination domain, etc.); a source and/or destination port (e.g., port 25, port 80, port 443, port 8080, port 22); a traffic protocol; traffic metadata; etc. The reports 244 can also include indications of traffic or usage patterns and information, such as frequency of communications, intervals, type of requests, type of responses, triggering processes or events (e.g., causality), resource usage, etc.

Each of the capturing agents 202 _(A), 206, 226 can include a respective unique capturing agent identifier on each of reports 244 it sends to collectors 118, to allow collectors 118 to determine which capturing agent sent the report. Capturing agent identifiers in reports 244 can also be used to determine which capturing agents reported what flows. Reports 244 can also include a flow identifier for each flow reported and a timestamp identifying a time period when the traffic was captured and/or reported. This information can then be used to determine analytics information, such as a capturing agent placement and topology, traffic statistics, usage information, activity details, a mapping of flows to processes and users, current conditions, etc. Such additional insights gained can be useful for analyzing the data in reports 244, as well as troubleshooting, security, visualization, configuration, planning, and management, and so forth.

As previously noted, the topology of the capturing agents can be ascertained from the reports 244. To illustrate, a packet received by VM 110 _(A) from fabric 112 can be captured and reported by VM capturing agent 202 _(A). Since the packet received by VM 110 _(A) will also flow through leaf router 104 _(A) and hypervisor 108 _(A), it can also be captured and reported by hypervisor capturing agent 206 and network device capturing agent 226. Thus, for a packet received by VM 110 _(A) from fabric 112, collectors 118 can receive a report of the packet from VM capturing agent 202 _(A), hypervisor capturing agent 206, and network device capturing agent 226.

Similarly, a packet sent by VM 110 _(A) to fabric 112 can be captured and reported by VM capturing agent 202 _(A). Since the packet sent by VM 110 _(A) will also flow through leaf router 104 _(A) and hypervisor 108 _(A), it can also be captured and reported by hypervisor capturing agent 206 and network device capturing agent 226. Thus, for a packet sent by VM 110 _(A) to fabric 112, collectors 118 can receive a report of the packet from VM capturing agent 202 _(A), hypervisor capturing agent 206, and network device capturing agent 226.

On the other hand, a packet originating at, or destined to, hypervisor 108 _(A), can be captured and reported by hypervisor capturing agent 206 and network device capturing agent 226, but not VM capturing agent 202 _(A), as such packet may not flow through VM 110 _(A). Moreover, a packet originating at, or destined to, leaf router 104 _(A), will be captured and reported by network device capturing agent 226, but not VM capturing agent 202 _(A), hypervisor capturing agent 206, or any other capturing agent on server 106 _(A), as such packet may not flow through VM 110 _(A), hypervisor 108 _(A), or server 106 _(A).

Reports 244 can be transmitted to collectors 118 periodically as new packets or traffic 242 are captured by a capturing agent, or otherwise based on a schedule, interval, or event, for example. Further, each capturing agent can send a single report or multiple reports to collectors 118. For example, each of the capturing agents can be configured to send a report to one or more collectors 118 for every flow, packet, message, communication, or network data received, transmitted, and/or generated by its respective host (e.g., VM 110 _(A), hypervisor 108 _(A), server 106 _(A), and leaf router 104 _(A)). As such, collectors 118 can receive a report of a same packet from multiple capturing agents. In other examples, one or more capturing agents can be configured to send a report to collectors 118 for one or more flows, packets, messages, communications, network data, or subset(s) thereof, received, transmitted, and/or generated by the respective host during a period of time or interval.

Collectors 118 can include a primary collector and a secondary collector. Each capturing agent can send the reports 244 to both the primary collector and the secondary collector. This can provide redundancy to ensure that any disruption to a collector does not result in a disruption in the collection or reporting of the reports 244.

FIG. 3 illustrates a schematic diagram of an example configuration 300 for collecting capturing agent reports (i.e., control flows). In configuration 300, traffic between fabric 112 and VM 110 _(A) is configured to flow through leaf router 104 _(A), server 106 _(A), and hypervisor 108 _(A). Moreover, traffic between fabric 112 and hypervisor 108 _(A) is configured to flow through leaf router 104 _(A).

VM capturing agent 202 _(A) can be configured to report to collector 118 traffic sent, received, or processed by VM 110 _(A). Hypervisor capturing agent 206 can be configured to report to collectors 118 traffic sent, received, or processed by hypervisor 108 _(A). Finally, network device capturing agent 226 can be configured to report to collectors 118 traffic sent, received, or processed by leaf router 104 _(A).

The collectors 118 can receive flow 302 from VM capturing agent 202 _(A), flow 304 from hypervisor capturing agent 206, and flow 306 from network device capturing agent 226. Flow 302 can include flows captured by VM capturing agent 202 _(A) at VM 110 _(A). Flow 304 can include flows captured by hypervisor capturing agent 206 at hypervisor 108 _(A). Flows captured by hypervisor capturing agent 206 can also include flow 302 captured by VM capturing agent 202 _(A), as traffic sent and received by VM 110 _(A) will be received and observed by hypervisor 108 _(A) and captured by hypervisor capturing agent 206. Flow 306 can include flows captured by network device capturing agent 226 at leaf router 104 _(A). Flows captured by network device capturing agent 226 can also include flow 302 captured by VM capturing agent 202 _(A) and flow 304 captured by hypervisor capturing agent 206, as traffic sent and received by VM 110 _(A) and hypervisor 108 _(A) is routed through leaf router 104 _(A) and can thus be captured by network device capturing agent 226.

Engine 120 can process the information, including any information about the capturing agents (e.g., agent placement, agent environment, etc.) and/or the captured traffic (e.g., statistics), received from the collector 118 to identify patterns, conditions, network or device characteristics; log statistics or history details; aggregate and/or process the data; generate reports, timelines, alerts, graphical user interfaces; detect errors, events, inconsistencies; troubleshoot networks or devices; configure networks or devices; deploy services or devices; reconfigure services, applications, devices, or networks; etc.

Collector 118 and/or engine 120 can map individual flows that traverse VM 110 _(A), hypervisor 108 _(A), and/or leaf router 104 _(A) to the specific capturing agents at VM 110 _(A), hypervisor 108 _(A), and/or leaf router 104 _(A). For example, collector 118 and/or engine 120 can determine that a particular flow that originated from VM 110 _(A) and destined for fabric 112 was sent by VM 110 _(A) and such flow was reported by VM capturing agent 202 _(A). Other information, such as process, user, timing, and/or other details may also be determined for the various flows. For example, it may be determined that the same flow was received by a process named Z on hypervisor 108 _(A) and forwarded to a process named Won leaf router 104 _(A) and also reported by hypervisor capturing agent 206.

While engine 120 is illustrated as a separate entity, other configurations are also contemplated herein. For example, engine 120 can be part of a centralized collector and/or a separate entity. Indeed, engine 120 can include one or more devices, applications, modules, databases, processing components, elements, etc.

FIG. 4A illustrates a schematic diagram of a multi-layer sharding scheme 400. Groups of capturing agents 402A-C in the network can be mapped to shards 406A-C in a first layer of shards 404. For example, group 402A can be mapped to shard 406A, group 402B can be mapped to shard 406B, and group 402C can be mapped to shard 406C. Capturing agents in a group will report captured data to the shard they are assigned to. Thus, capturing agents in the group 402A of capturing agents will report captured data to shard 406A, the capturing agents in the group 402B of capturing agents will report captured data to shard 406B, and capturing agents in the group 402C of capturing agents will report captured data to shard 406C. Other configurations are also contemplated herein. For example, an agent in one group can be mapped to a different shard than one or more agents in the same group.

The capturing agents can send their captured data to their mapped shard for collection by any of the collectors in that specific shard. For example, the capturing agents in group 402A may send their captured data to shard 406A for collection by one or more of the collectors in shard 406A without specifying which particular collector should receive the data. However, in other examples, the capturing agents in the group 402A can select one or more specific collectors from their mapped shard 406A to receive their captured data. To illustrate, a capturing agent in the group 402A can select a collector in the shard 406A by hashing a flow key associated with the flow the capturing agent intends to report to that collector. Here, the specific collector from the shard 406A can be assigned to a hash value which corresponds to the value obtained when hashing the flow key of the particular flow. Thus, all data reported by that capturing agent for that flow will be sent to that particular collector in the shard 406A.

The grouping of capturing agents and mapping of the groups of capturing agents 402A-C to shards of collectors 406A-C can help scale the reporting and collecting of data captured by the capturing agents 116 in the network. However, since multiple capturing agents can be involved in the same communication and the capturing agents involved in any communication can vary, some communications may involve capturing agents that are assigned to different shards 406A-C in the first layer of shards 404. In these scenarios, each of the capturing agents may send their captured data for a particular flow to different collectors. Accordingly, each collector will only receive a portion of that flow.

For example, assume a communication associated with a flow involves capturing agent A in group 402A and capturing agent B in group 402A. Here, capturing agent 402A is mapped to shard 406A and capturing agent B is also mapped to shard 406A. If both capturing agents A and B send their captured portions of the flow to the same collector in shard 406A, then the receiving collector in shard 406A will receive the entire portion of the flow, including both ends of the communication.

However, assume a communication associated with a flow involves capturing agent 4 (e.g., from agents 1-100) in group 402A and capturing agent 101 (e.g., from agents 101-1000) in group 402B. Here, capturing agent group 402A is mapped to shard 406A and capturing agent group 402B is mapped to shard 406B. Thus, capturing agent 4 in group 402A may send its portion of the flow to a collector (e.g., collector 4) in shard 406A while capturing agent 101 in group 402B may send its portion of the flow to a collector (e.g., collector 11) in shard 406B. Accordingly, each of the collectors (i.e., collector 4 and collector 11) will receive only a portion of the flow and thus will not have the entire portion of the flow from both ends of the communication (i.e., capturing agents 4 and 101). This segmentation of the data may make it difficult to collect, analyze, and/or aggregate all of the data for a particular flow. The scheme 400 can resolve this issue by creating a second layer of shards 408 to unify, aggregate, and/or combine all portions of a flow that has been sent to different collectors in the first layer 404.

The second layer 408 can include shards 410A-C containing one or more collectors from the collectors 118. The collectors in the shards 410A-C can be mapped to flows according to respective mappings 412A-C that ensure that all portions of a flow received by different collectors in the first layer 404 will be sent from the different collectors in the first layer 404 to the same collector in the second layer 408. Each collector in shards 410A-C from the second layer 408 can be assigned a respective flow key and hash. The collectors in shards 406A-C can then determine which collector from shards 410A-C in the second layer 408 to send a received flow to by hashing the flow key of that flow. The result of hashing the flow key of that flow should match the value of the respective flow key and hash assigned to a particular collector in the shards 410A-C in the second layer 408. This can ensure that all portions of that flow will be reported to the same collector in the shards 410A-C in the second layer 408. Accordingly, all ends of a communication associated with a flow can be maintained together or aggregated even if various portions of the flow are initially reported to different collectors in the first layer 404.

When a collector receives a flow from a capturing agent, it can determine if it has received the entire portion of the flow (e.g., every end of a communication associated with the flow). In a flow associated with a communication involving multiple capturing agents, the collector can determine if it received both ends of the flow (e.g., the portion of the flow captured by both capturing agents involved in the communication). For example, the collector can analyze the flow and/or its contents (e.g., packet headers, flow of communications, type of communications, number of communications, etc.), and determine that the communication associated with a flow involved multiple parties. To illustrate, the flow may include a source address and a destination address which would indicate that at least two parties were involved in the communication. As another example, the flow may include a type of message or response, such as a SYN or ACK message, which suggests that another message or response should be expected for that flow (e.g., if an ACK is included in the flow, one could expect a SYN message should also be part of the flow as part of a handshake). As yet another example, a flow may include identifiers, such as session or sequence identifiers, that may suggest that the flow should include X number of packets or messages. Thus, if the collector has obtained less than that number, it can infer that it has not received the entire portion of the communication.

As noted above, if the collector has not received the entire portion of the flow (e.g., both ends of the communication of the flow or all packets in a flow), it can infer that the other capturing agent is assigned/mapped to a different collector. This can trigger the collector to send the flow it received from the particular capturing agent mapped to that collector to a different collector on the second layer 408. The other capturing agent involved in the flow may similarly determine that it has not received the entire portion of the flow, and consequently send its received portion to the same collector on the second layer 408. Accordingly, the collector from the second layer 408 will ultimately receive every portion of the flow.

FIG. 4B illustrates a schematic diagram of a system 450 for hierarchical sharding collectors, sensors, and flows in accordance with various example embodiments. Capturing agents 116 _(A-B) on VM 110 _(A) and VM 110 _(B) can be mapped to shard 406A in the first layer 404. In this example, the capturing agent 116 _(A) on VM 110 _(A) can be mapped to collector 2 in shard 406A from the first layer of shards 404, and the capturing agent 116 _(B) on VM 110 _(B) can be mapped to collector 10 in shard 406A. Thus, the capturing agents 116 _(A-B) on VM 110 _(A) and VM 110 _(B) can be configured to report their captured data to different collectors. This means that for communications involving both capturing agents, the respective flow data captured by the capturing agents will be reported to different collectors, which can cause the flow data to be divided between different collectors.

For example, assume flow 452 involving capturing agents on both VM 110 _(A) and VM 110 _(B) includes a first portion (P1) and a second portion (P2). Further, assume that the capturing agent 116 _(A) on VM 110 _(A) is mapped to collector 2 and the capturing agent 116 _(B) on VM 1110 _(B) is mapped to collector 10. In this example, the capturing agent 116 _(A) on VM 110 _(A) may report the first portion (P1) 454 of the flow 452 to collector 2, and the capturing agent 116 _(B) on VM 1110 _(B) may report the second portion (P2) 456 of the flow 452 to collector 10. Thus, collectors 2 and 10 from shard 406A will each receive only part of the flow 452, namely flows 454, 456. The reported flow 452 will therefore be divided between collectors 2 and 10 from shard 406A.

Collectors 2 and 10 can thus analyze their respective portions of the flow 452 and determine that they did not receive the entire portion of the flow 452. For example, collector 2 from shard 406A can determine that it has only received a first portion (P1) of the flow 452 and has not received another portion of the flow 452, namely, the second portion (P2), and vice versa. Collectors 2 and 10 from shard 406A can thus determine that they have collected some portion of the flow 452 but are missing at least one other portion of the flow 452.

Collectors 2 and 10 from shard 406A can make this determination in various ways and based on various factors. For example, collector 2 can analyze the first portion (P1) of the flow 452 it has received and determine that it corresponds to only one end of the communication associated with the flow 452, and infer that it is missing at least a portion because it has not received any other end of the communication. As another example, collector 2 can determine that it has only received a portion of the flow corresponding to an incoming or received portion of the communication but does not have the portion corresponding to the outgoing or transmitted portion of the communication. The collector 2 can analyze the data it has received to determine whether other portions of the flow 452 may be missing. For example, the collector 2 may analyze characteristics and/or statistics of the flow 452, such as number of received or transmitted packets reported in the data received by the collector 2, the destination address and/or port in the reported packet(s), source address and/or port in the reported packet(s), type of communication associated with the reported packets (e.g., request and/or reply, SYN packet and/or ACK packet, etc.), number of nodes involved in the communication versus number of nodes associated with the reported packet(s), etc.

When each of the collectors 2 and 10 from shard 406A determines that it has not received the entire portion of the flow 452, it can forward their received portion to a collector (e.g., collector 2) in shard 410A from the second layer 408 assigned to that particular flow. For example, collectors 2 and 10 from shard 406A in the first layer 404 can determine that they each did not receive the entire portion of the flow 452, and forward their portion of the flow 452 to collector 2 in shard 410A from the second layer of shards 408. Collector 2 in shard 410A can be the particular collector in the second layer 408 that is mapped to the flow 452 (e.g., is assigned the flow key and hash of flow 452).

For example, the various collectors (e.g., collectors 1-10) in each shard on the second layer 408 can be designated one or more particular flows, which they will be responsible for collecting and/or aggregating from one or more collectors in the first layer 404. Collectors in the second layer 408 can be mapped to flows based on, for example, flow identifiers, collector identifiers, hash values computed for the flows, etc. To illustrate, collector 2 from shard 410A in the second layer 408 can be assigned to specific hash values computed for one or more particular flows. Thus, any flow that hashes to that hash value assigned to collector 2 will be forwarded to collector 2 from a receiving collector in the first layer 404. This can ensure that all portions of a flow map to the same collector in the second layer 408.

Thus, in the previous example, collector 2 in shard 410A from the second layer 408 can receive the first portion (P1) of the flow 452 (i.e., flow 454) from collector 2 in shard 406A on the first layer 404 and the second portion (P2) of the flow 452 from collector 10 (i.e., flow 456) in shard 406A on the first layer 404. Collector 2 in shard 410A from the second layer 408 can then aggregate the first portion (P1) and the second portion (P2) to obtain the entire flow 452. Any additional portions of the flow 452 received by a collector in the first layer 404 will also map to collector 2 in shard 410A on the second layer 408 and, therefore, will be forwarded to collector 2 in the second layer 408. The collector 2 in the second layer 408 can thus collect and/or aggregate all portions of the flow 452 from all collectors in the first layer 404 that received a portion of the flow 452.

FIG. 5 illustrates a listing 500 of example fields on a capturing agent report. The listing 500 can include one or more fields, such as:

Flow identifier (e.g., unique identifier associated with the flow).

Capturing agent identifier (e.g., data uniquely identifying reporting capturing agent).

Timestamp (e.g., time of event, report, etc.).

Interval (e.g., time between current report and previous report, interval between flows or packets, interval between events, etc.).

Duration (e.g., duration of event, duration of communication, duration of flow, duration of report, etc.).

Flow direction (e.g., egress flow, ingress flow, etc.).

Application identifier (e.g., identifier of application associated with flow, process, event, or data).

Port (e.g., source port, destination port, layer 4 port, etc.).

Destination address (e.g., interface address associated with destination, IP address, domain name, network address, hardware address, virtual address, physical address, etc.).

Source address (e.g., interface address associated with source, IP address, domain name, network address, hardware address, virtual address, physical address, etc.).

Interface (e.g., interface address, interface information, etc.).

Protocol (e.g., layer 4 protocol, layer 3 protocol, etc.).

Event (e.g., description of event, event identifier, etc.).

Flag (e.g., layer 3 flag, flag options, etc.).

Tag (e.g., virtual local area network tag, etc.).

Process (e.g., process identifier, etc.).

User (e.g., OS username, etc.).

Bytes (e.g., flow size, packet size, transmission size, etc.).

Sensor Type (e.g., the type of virtualized environment hosting the capturing agent, such as hypervisor or VM; the type of virtual network device, such as VNIC, LINUX bridge, OVS, software switch, etc.).

The listing 500 includes a non-limiting example of fields in a report. Other fields and data items are also contemplated herein, such as handshake information, system information, network address associated with capturing agent or host, operating system environment information, network data or statistics, process statistics, system statistics, etc. The order in which these fields are illustrated is also exemplary and can be rearranged in any other way. One or more of these fields can be part of a header, a trailer, or a payload of in one or more packets. Moreover, one or more of these fields can be applied to the one or more packets as labels. Each of the fields can include data, metadata, and/or any other information relevant to the fields.

Having disclosed some basic system components and concepts, the disclosure now turns to the exemplary method embodiments shown in FIG. 6. For the sake of clarity, the method is described with reference to FIGS. 1 and 4A-B. However, the example methods can be practiced by any software or hardware components, devices, etc. heretofore disclosed. The steps outlined herein are exemplary and can be implemented in any combination thereof in any order, including combinations that exclude, add, or modify certain steps.

At step 600, a first layer of shards 404 can be created containing respective groups 406A-C of collectors. At step 602, a second layer of shards 408 can be created containing respective groups 410A-C of collectors.

At step 604, capturing agents 116 deployed throughout a network environment 100 can be assigned to respective shards 406A-C from the first layer 404. In some examples, the capturing agents 116 can also be assigned or map to specific collectors within the respective shards 406A-C. Capturing agents 116 may be mapped to specific collectors based on the captured flow they intend to report. For example, the capturing agents 116 may select a collector to send a flow to by hashing the flow or identifying a unique identifier for the flow. The collectors in the respective shards 406A-C can be assigned specific flows based on a hash value of the flow, a unique identifier of the flow, etc. Thus, a capturing agent can simply send a captured flow to a collector in the first layer 404 that is assigned to the hash value, unique ID, etc., of that particular flow.

In some cases, a capturing agent can be mapped to the same shard and/or collector for all flows. For example, capturing agent A may be mapped to collector X in shard 406A for all flows reported by capturing agent A. This assignment can be based on one or more factors, such as unique ID of the capturing agent and/or collector, the network address of the capturing agent and/or collector, location of the capturing agent and/or collector (e.g., physical location, logical location, geographic location, subnet or network segment, etc.), media access control (MAC) address of the collector and/or host associated with the capturing agent, etc.

In other cases, a capturing agent can be mapped to different shards and/or collectors based on specific flows. For example, a capturing agent can be mapped to a shard and/or collector for each specific flow. Thus, the shard and/or collector mapped to the capturing agent may or may not differ for different flows. As previously noted, collectors can be assigned to specific flows based on one or more factors, such as hash value, unique ID, etc. Thus, the capturing agent can be mapped to a specific collector for a flow and, in some cases, the capturing agent may be mapped to a different collector for a different flow if the different flow is assigned to a different collector.

At step 606, a collector (e.g., collector 2) in the first layer 404 can receive a first portion 454 of a flow 452 from a first capturing agent (e.g., capturing agent 116 _(A) at VM 110 _(A)). At step 608, the collector can determine that a second portion 456 of the flow 452 was not received by the collector. At step 610, the collector can then send the first portion 454 of the flow 452 to a collector (e.g., collector 2 in shard 410A) in the second layer 408.

At step 612, another collector (e.g., collector 10 in shard 406A) in the first layer 404 can receive the second portion 456 of the flow 452 from a second capturing agent (e.g., capturing agent 116 _(B) at VM 110 _(B)). At step 614, that collector can determine that the first portion 454 of the flow 452 was not received by the collector. At step 616, the collector can then send the second portion 456 of the flow 452 to the same collector (e.g., collector 2 in shard 410A) in the second layer 408 that received the first portion 454 of the flow 452.

At step 618, collector in the second layer 408 can determine that the first portion 454 and the second portion 456 are part of the same flow 452. At step 620, the collector in the second layer 408 can combine and/or aggregate the first portion 454 and the second portion 456 to yield an aggregated network flow. The aggregated network flow can be the network flow 452.

The disclosure now turns to the example network device and system illustrated in FIGS. 7 and 8A-B.

FIG. 7 illustrates an example network device 700 according to some embodiments. Network device 700 includes a master central processing unit (CPU) 704, interfaces 702, and a bus 710 (e.g., a PCI bus). When acting under the control of appropriate software or firmware, the CPU 704 is responsible for executing packet management, error detection, and/or routing functions. The CPU 704 preferably accomplishes all these functions under the control of software including an operating system and any appropriate applications software. CPU 704 may include one or more processors 708 such as a processor from the Motorola family of microprocessors or the MIPS family of microprocessors. In an alternative embodiment, processor 708 is specially designed hardware for controlling the operations of network device 700. In a specific embodiment, a memory 706 (such as non-volatile RAM, ROM, TCAM, etc.) also forms part of CPU 704. However, there are many different ways in which memory could be coupled to the system.

The interfaces 702 are typically provided as interface cards (sometimes referred to as “line cards”). Generally, they control the sending and receiving of data packets over the network and sometimes support other peripherals used with the network device 700. Among the interfaces that may be provided are Ethernet interfaces, frame relay interfaces, cable interfaces, DSL interfaces, token ring interfaces, and the like. In addition, various very high-speed interfaces may be provided such as fast token ring interfaces, wireless interfaces, Ethernet interfaces, Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, ATM interfaces, HSSI interfaces, POS interfaces, FDDI interfaces and the like. Generally, these interfaces may include ports appropriate for communication with the appropriate media. In some cases, they may also include an independent processor and, in some instances, volatile RAM. The independent processors may control such communications intensive tasks as packet switching, media control and management. By providing separate processors for the communications intensive tasks, these interfaces allow the master microprocessor 708 to efficiently perform routing computations, network diagnostics, security functions, etc.

Although the system shown in FIG. 7 is one specific network device of the present invention, it is by no means the only network device architecture on which the present invention can be implemented. For example, an architecture having a single processor that handles communications as well as routing computations, etc. is often used. Further, other types of interfaces and media could also be used with the network device. Moreover, network device can have various configurations in different embodiments. For example, the network device 700 can include a Layer 2 and/or Layer 3 switch, a router, a bridge, a gateway, a traffic management or filtering system, etc. Further, the network device 700 can include hardware and/or software/virtual networking elements, such as an ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit), a virtual network interface, a virtual switch (e.g., vSwitch), etc.

Regardless of the network device's configuration, it may employ one or more memories or memory modules (including memory 706) configured to store program instructions for the general-purpose network operations and mechanisms for roaming, route optimization and routing functions described herein. The program instructions may control the operation of an operating system and/or one or more applications, for example. The memory or memories may also be configured to store tables such as mobility binding, registration, and association tables, etc.

FIG. 8A and FIG. 8B illustrate example system embodiments. The more appropriate embodiment will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art when practicing the present technology. Persons of ordinary skill in the art will also readily appreciate that other system embodiments are possible.

FIG. 8A illustrates a conventional system bus computing system architecture 800 wherein the components of the system are in electrical communication with each other using a bus 805. Exemplary system 800 includes a processing unit (CPU or processor) 810 and a system bus 805 that couples various system components including the system memory 815, such as read only memory (ROM) 820 and random access memory (RAM) 825, to the processor 810. The system 800 can include a cache of high-speed memory connected directly with, in close proximity to, or integrated as part of the processor 810. The system 800 can copy data from the memory 815 and/or the storage device 830 to the cache 812 for quick access by the processor 810. In this way, the cache can provide a performance boost that avoids processor 810 delays while waiting for data. These and other modules can control or be configured to control the processor 810 to perform various actions. Other system memory 815 may be available for use as well. The memory 815 can include multiple different types of memory with different performance characteristics. The processor 810 can include any general purpose processor and a hardware module or software module, such as module 1 832, module 2 834, and module 3 836 stored in storage device 830, configured to control the processor 810 as well as a special-purpose processor where software instructions are incorporated into the actual processor design. The processor 810 may essentially be a completely self-contained computing system, containing multiple cores or processors, a bus, memory controller, cache, etc. A multi-core processor may be symmetric or asymmetric.

To enable user interaction with the computing device 800, an input device 845 can represent any number of input mechanisms, such as a microphone for speech, a touch-sensitive screen for gesture or graphical input, keyboard, mouse, motion input, speech and so forth. An output device 835 can also be one or more of a number of output mechanisms known to those of skill in the art. In some instances, multimodal systems can enable a user to provide multiple types of input to communicate with the computing device 800. The communications interface 840 can generally govern and manage the user input and system output. There is no restriction on operating on any particular hardware arrangement and therefore the basic features here may easily be substituted for improved hardware or firmware arrangements as they are developed.

Storage device 830 is a non-volatile memory and can be a hard disk or other types of computer readable media which can store data that are accessible by a computer, such as magnetic cassettes, flash memory cards, solid state memory devices, digital versatile disks, cartridges, random access memories (RAMs) 825, read only memory (ROM) 820, and hybrids thereof.

The storage device 830 can include software modules 832, 834, 836 for controlling the processor 810. Other hardware or software modules are contemplated. The storage device 830 can be connected to the system bus 805. In one aspect, a hardware module that performs a particular function can include the software component stored in a computer-readable medium in connection with the necessary hardware components, such as the processor 810, bus 805, display 835, and so forth, to carry out the function.

FIG. 8B illustrates an example computer system 850 having a chipset architecture that can be used in executing the described method and generating and displaying a graphical user interface (GUI). Computer system 850 is an example of computer hardware, software, and firmware that can be used to implement the disclosed technology. System 850 can include a processor 855, representative of any number of physically and/or logically distinct resources capable of executing software, firmware, and hardware configured to perform identified computations. Processor 855 can communicate with a chipset 860 that can control input to and output from processor 855. In this example, chipset 860 outputs information to output device 865, such as a display, and can read and write information to storage device 870, which can include magnetic media, and solid state media, for example. Chipset 860 can also read data from and write data to RAM 875. A bridge 880 for interfacing with a variety of user interface components 885 can be provided for interfacing with chipset 860. Such user interface components 885 can include a keyboard, a microphone, touch detection and processing circuitry, a pointing device, such as a mouse, and so on. In general, inputs to system 850 can come from any of a variety of sources, machine generated and/or human generated.

Chipset 860 can also interface with one or more communication interfaces 890 that can have different physical interfaces. Such communication interfaces can include interfaces for wired and wireless local area networks, for broadband wireless networks, as well as personal area networks. Some applications of the methods for generating, displaying, and using the GUI disclosed herein can include receiving ordered datasets over the physical interface or be generated by the machine itself by processor 855 analyzing data stored in storage 870 or 875. Further, the machine can receive inputs from a user via user interface components 885 and execute appropriate functions, such as browsing functions by interpreting these inputs using processor 855.

It can be appreciated that example systems 800 and 850 can have more than one processor 810 or be part of a group or cluster of computing devices networked together to provide greater processing capability.

For clarity of explanation, in some instances the present technology may be presented as including individual functional blocks including functional blocks comprising devices, device components, steps or routines in a method embodied in software, or combinations of hardware and software.

In some embodiments the computer-readable storage devices, mediums, and memories can include a cable or wireless signal containing a bit stream and the like. However, when mentioned, non-transitory computer-readable storage media expressly exclude media such as energy, carrier signals, electromagnetic waves, and signals per se.

Methods according to the above-described examples can be implemented using computer-executable instructions that are stored or otherwise available from computer readable media. Such instructions can comprise, for example, instructions and data which cause or otherwise configure a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or special purpose processing device to perform a certain function or group of functions. Portions of computer resources used can be accessible over a network. The computer executable instructions may be, for example, binaries, intermediate format instructions such as assembly language, firmware, or source code. Examples of computer-readable media that may be used to store instructions, information used, and/or information created during methods according to described examples include magnetic or optical disks, flash memory, USB devices provided with non-volatile memory, networked storage devices, and so on.

Devices implementing methods according to these disclosures can comprise hardware, firmware and/or software, and can take any of a variety of form factors. Typical examples of such form factors include laptops, smart phones, small form factor personal computers, personal digital assistants, rackmount devices, standalone devices, and so on. Functionality described herein also can be embodied in peripherals or add-in cards. Such functionality can also be implemented on a circuit board among different chips or different processes executing in a single device, by way of further example.

The instructions, media for conveying such instructions, computing resources for executing them, and other structures for supporting such computing resources are means for providing the functions described in these disclosures.

Although a variety of examples and other information was used to explain aspects within the scope of the appended claims, no limitation of the claims should be implied based on particular features or arrangements in such examples, as one of ordinary skill would be able to use these examples to derive a wide variety of implementations. Further and although some subject matter may have been described in language specific to examples of structural features and/or method steps, it is to be understood that the subject matter defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to these described features or acts. For example, such functionality can be distributed differently or performed in components other than those identified herein. Rather, the described features and steps are disclosed as examples of components of systems and methods within the scope of the appended claims.

It should be understood that features or configurations herein with reference to one embodiment or example can be implemented in, or combined with, other embodiments or examples herein. That is, terms such as “embodiment”, “variation”, “aspect”, “example”, “configuration”, “implementation”, “case”, and any other terms which may connote an embodiment, as used herein to describe specific features or configurations, are not intended to limit any of the associated features or configurations to a specific or separate embodiment or embodiments, and should not be interpreted to suggest that such features or configurations cannot be combined with features or configurations described with reference to other embodiments, variations, aspects, examples, configurations, implementations, cases, and so forth. In other words, features described herein with reference to a specific example (e.g., embodiment, variation, aspect, configuration, implementation, case, etc.) can be combined with features described with reference to another example. Precisely, one of ordinary skill in the art will readily recognize that the various embodiments or examples described herein, and their associated features, can be combined with each other.

A phrase such as an “aspect” does not imply that such aspect is essential to the subject technology or that such aspect applies to all configurations of the subject technology. A disclosure relating to an aspect may apply to all configurations, or one or more configurations. A phrase such as an aspect may refer to one or more aspects and vice versa. A phrase such as a “configuration” does not imply that such configuration is essential to the subject technology or that such configuration applies to all configurations of the subject technology. A disclosure relating to a configuration may apply to all configurations, or one or more configurations. A phrase such as a configuration may refer to one or more configurations and vice versa. The word “exemplary” is used herein to mean “serving as an example or illustration.” Any aspect or design described herein as “exemplary” is not necessarily to be construed as preferred or advantageous over other aspects or designs.

Moreover, claim language reciting “at least one of” a set indicates that one member of the set or multiple members of the set satisfy the claim. For example, claim language reciting “at least one of A, B, and C” or “at least one of A, B, or C” both mean A alone, B alone, C alone, A and B together, A and C together, B and C together, or A, B and C together. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for managing a plurality of collector devices including at least first, second and third collector devices, the method comprising: receiving, by the first collector device, a first portion of a network flow from a first capturing agent, the first portion of the network flow being captured by the first capturing agent at a first host associated with the first capturing agent; determining, by the first collector device, that a second portion of the network flow was not received, to yield a first determination; based on the first determination, sending, by the first collector device, the first portion of the network flow to the second collector device; receiving, by the third collector device, the second portion of the network flow from a second capturing agent, the second portion of the network flow being captured by the second capturing agent at a second host associated with the second capturing agent; determining, by the third collector device, that the first portion of the network flow was not received, to yield a second determination; based on the second determination, sending, by the third collector device, the second portion of the network flow to the second collector device; determining, by the second collector device, that the first portion of the network flow and the second portion of the network flow are part of a same network flow; and aggregating, by the second collector device, the first portion of the network flow and the second portion of the network flow to yield an aggregated network flow.
 2. The method of claim 1, further comprising: assigning a plurality of capturing agents deployed throughout a network to respective shards, each of the plurality of capturing agents being configured to capture network activity associated with a respective host and report the network activity to one or more collector devices in the respective shards, wherein each of the respective shards comprises a number of assigned collector devices from the plurality of collector devices.
 3. The method of claim 2, wherein the first portion of the network flow is transmitted by the first capturing agent to a first shard from the respective shards, and the second portion of the network flow is transmitted by the second capturing agent to a second shard from the respective shards, wherein the first collector device is part of the first shard and the third collector device is part of the second shard.
 4. The method of claim 2, wherein the second collector device is part of a shard from the respective shards, and wherein the second collector device is assigned a flow key and hash that corresponds to the network flow.
 5. The method of claim 4, wherein the second collector device is selected to receive the first portion and the second portion of the network flow from a plurality of other collector devices in the shard based on the flow key and hash corresponding to the network flow.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein the first collector device and the third collector device are mapped to respective shards from a first layer of shards, each of the respective shards comprising a selected group of collector devices, and wherein the second collector device is mapped to a shard from a second layer of shards.
 7. The method of claim 6, wherein the first layer of shards is designated to receive network flow data directly from capturing agents deployed throughout a network, and wherein the second layer of shards is designated to receive different portions of the network flow data directly from different collector devices in the first layer of shards.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein the first capturing agent comprises at least one of a process, a kernel module, or a software driver.
 9. The method of claim 8, wherein the first capturing agent resides in one of a hypervisor on the host or a virtual machine on the hypervisor, the network flow being sent or received by the one of the hypervisor or the virtual machine.
 10. A system for managing a plurality of collector devices including at least first, second and third collector devices, the system comprising: one or more processors; and one or more computer-readable storage devices having stored therein instructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising: receiving, by the first collector device, a first portion of a network flow from a first capturing agent, the first portion of the network flow being captured by the first capturing agent at a first host associated with the first capturing agent; determining, by the first collector device, that a second portion of the network flow was not received, to yield a first determination; based on the first determination, sending, by the first collector device, the first portion of the network flow to the second collector device; receiving, by the third collector device, the second portion of the network flow from a second capturing agent, the second portion of the network flow being captured by the second capturing agent at a second host associated with the second capturing agent; determining, by the third collector device, that the first portion of the network flow was not received, to yield a second determination; based on the second determination, sending, by the third collector device, the second portion of the network flow to the second collector device; determining, by the second collector device, that the first portion of the network flow and the second portion of the network flow are part of a same network flow; and aggregating, by the second collector device, the first portion of the network flow and the second portion of the network flow to yield an aggregated network flow.
 11. The system of claim 10, the one or more computer-readable storage devices storing additional instructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising: assigning a plurality of capturing agents deployed throughout a network to respective shards, each of the plurality of capturing agents being configured to capture network activity associated with a respective host and report the network activity to one or more collector devices in the respective shards, wherein each of the respective shards comprises a number of assigned collector devices from the plurality of collector devices.
 12. The system of claim 11, wherein the first portion of the network flow is transmitted by the first capturing agent to a first shard from the respective shards, and the second portion of the network flow is transmitted by the second capturing agent to a second shard from the respective shards, wherein the first collector device is part of the first shard and the third collector device is part of the second shard.
 13. The system of claim 11, wherein the second collector device is part of a shard from the respective shards, and wherein the second collector device is assigned a flow key and hash that corresponds to the network flow.
 14. The system of claim 13, wherein the second collector device is selected to receive the first portion and the second portion of the network flow from a plurality of other collector devices in the shard based on the flow key and hash corresponding to the network flow.
 15. A non-transitory computer-readable storage device storing instructions for managing a plurality of collector devices including at least first, second and third collector devices, which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising: receiving, by the first collector device, a first portion of a network flow from a first capturing agent, the first portion of the network flow being captured by the first capturing agent at a first host associated with the first capturing agent; determining, by the first collector device, that a second portion of the network flow was not received, to yield a first determination; based on the first determination, sending, by the first collector device, the first portion of the network flow to the second collector device; receiving, by the third collector device, the second portion of the network flow from a second capturing agent, the second portion of the network flow being captured by the second capturing agent at a second host associated with the second capturing agent; determining, by the third collector device, that the first portion of the network flow was not received, to yield a second determination; based on the second determination, sending, by the third collector device, the second portion of the network flow to the second collector device; determining, by the second collector device, that the first portion of the network flow and the second portion of the network flow are part of a same network flow; and aggregating, by the second collector device, the first portion of the network flow and the second portion of the network flow to yield an aggregated network flow.
 16. The computer-readable storage device of claim 15, storing additional instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising: assigning a plurality of capturing agents deployed throughout a network to respective shards, each of the plurality of capturing agents being configured to capture network activity associated with a respective host and report the network activity to one or more collector devices in the respective shards, wherein each of the respective shards comprises a number of assigned collector devices from the plurality of collector devices.
 17. The computer-readable storage device of claim 16, wherein the first portion of the network flow is transmitted by the first capturing agent to a first shard from the respective shards, and the second portion of the network flow is transmitted by the second capturing agent to a second shard from the respective shards, wherein the first collector device is part of the first shard and the third collector device is part of the second shard.
 18. The computer-readable storage device of claim 16, wherein: the second collector device is part of a shard from the respective shards; the second collector device is assigned a flow key and hash that corresponds to the network flow; and the second collector device is selected to receive the first portion and the second portion of the network flow from a plurality of other collector devices in the shard based on the flow key and hash corresponding to the network flow.
 19. The computer-readable storage device of claim 15, wherein: the first collector device and the third collector device are mapped to respective shards from a first layer of shards, each of the respective shards comprising a selected group of collector devices, and wherein the second collector device is mapped to a shard from a second layer of shards; and the first layer of shards is designated to receive network flow data directly from capturing agents deployed throughout a network, and wherein the second layer of shards is designated to receive different portions of the network flow data directly from different collector devices in the first layer of shards. 